Mary Burton shuddered a little, though she did not know why, and the lips of Jefferson Edwardes compressed themselves as he followed her to the music-room on the second floor. He had caught the tigerish cruelty and power-lust in the eyes of Mary's brother, and he knew that for their satisfaction someone must pay very dear. Paul sat at the piano as they entered the music-room and the emotions which he expressed upon the keys were emotions of deep unrest. They ran in strains of folklore plaintiveness and rhythmic sobs of wailing cadences. When Mary spoke the musician turned with a start. He had not heard their entrance. "I didn't know we should find you here, Paul." He nodded as he rose from the instrument. "Hamilton asked me to wait," he explained. "He's having some tremendously important conference--and after a trying fight he always likes me to play for him." The three sat for a time unaccustomedly silent. Mary could not forget the impression of those conquered faces, and Edwardes, with the same thought, forebore from comment. Within a half-hour Hamilton himself joined them. His eyes were glowing beacons of triumph and his lips wore a smile of victory. "Tonight I have met and defeated Malone's attempt to crush me," he announced with a half-savage elation. "Tomorrow the financial world will recognize in me the actual and unchallenged head of Coal and Ore." Then, turning to Jefferson, he added: "You know what that signifies, Edwardes." The visitor nodded, but no words of enthusiastic congratulation came to his tongue. "It means," he replied slowly, "that you hold a mightier financial power than any other business man in New York." "And now that you have all that," Mary put the question slowly and gravely, "to what use will you put it?" Hamilton bent upon her a gaze of tense visioning and his answer came in rapt eagerness: "To build a greater structure of power than any man before me has ever reared." After a moment's pause he went on: "Edwardes, have you no word of congratulation? It was you who first kindled my dreams into a blaze, you know." The visitor spoke with his eyes fixed on those of the man who had outgrown him in financial stature and become a Colossus. "I was thinking of that," he responded, "and I was wondering at what cost you had won this victory." "Conquest," retorted Hamilton Burton shortly, "can take no thought of cost." "I wonder!" Edwardes spoke reflectively; then with a straightforward honesty he went on: "It rather seems to me that once in a great while there rises in the world a marvel-man. To such a spirit the impossible is possible and opportunity is pliant. He may become the greatest boon or the greatest scourge of his generation. Such a man uses or prostitutes his great gifts in just so far as he uses, or fails to use, a conscience." For an instant Hamilton's cheeks flamed, then he laughed: